STOP THE LIES! - A.I. made art DOES NOT STEAL art! - Addressing the evidence

With the growing misinformation and fearmongering about AI art I've decided to speak up about it.

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[Isuna_arts]

Thank you Shad for this video and this wholesome and well based explanation of this topic.
I thought I was standing alone with my thoughts about this and I am a freelance-artist in a fandom.

For me AI was a tool and it still is. One I want to master and use to my advantage, but I feared, that this would make me a bad person in the heads of other artists. I mean, how can you blame the hammer that breaks the window, and not the person throwing it?
I see the problems. Sure I do, but the problem is not this tool, it's the people using it in a shady way or misusing it at all. As always it's the people, thiefs or scammers.

I hope that this video goes viral and opens the eyes of other fellow artists.
There's nothing to fear about AI. We have to embrace this technology and use it to make us and our art stronger.

[Armadder]

Perhaps I'm not caught up with AI news but I could have sworn that when it comes to AI generated music, they don't dare use copyrighted music in the database. Why is it allowed for visual art but music is the exception?

That's my only gripe about this whole AI situation.

[Darth_Brew]

"People don't actually enjoy the act of drawing, painting or illustrating. Otherwise why are they not doing nothingt but drawing straight lines on the paper. Or why don't they enjoy painting the walls of the house"

Minor point but, painting a wall can actually be enjoyable. Simple act of putting paint on wall, and seeing your progress as you keep going, can feel rewarding.

Why would people keep creating these amasing pieces of art, if they did not enjoy the process.The creative part of piece of art continues from start, to when artist feels it's finshed. Doodling, linework, color, shadows and everything else is part of the creative progress. Many artist even add very minor details on their work, that mostly go un-noticed by many people. They do that just because they want to, and they enjoy it. If it was just work to get piece finished, they would not bother with such things. I think you, as an artist, should understand that.

Also, When you write, why do you even bother with anything after the creative progress of writing the story. Like editing it and stuff (i don't really know what is needed to be done, i'm not writer. But i think my point should be pretty clear). Just take and publish it. Why bother with any afterwork. The creative part is done, right.

I know this was just one small part on the video, but it bothered me. How could someone who calls themself an artist, not realize how ridiculous that sounds.

Edit: Somehow i forgot this. You are making pretty big generalization here, with your "most artists" statement. You really should not speak for "most artists" unless you can prove they have actually said that.

[SneakyTogedemaru]

I never thought it would be happening, but here we are. How long until the term alike to "hand-made art" would become meaningful and necessary?

[honey]

If an AI can perfectly replicate Loish’s style and her artwork, and someone can turn around and sell work it, I see that as an issue

[strategicgamingwithaacorns]

DeviantArt was recently caught using people's artwork to train AIs how to make Art without their consent, and many users of the site quit in outrage. AI-generated art is useful, but there needs to be codified ethics in using it.

[icecrystal]

In response to the point made at the 14 minute mark..

Yes, for an individual using someone else's art for a non commercial use, they can't be expected to check to make sure that art is indeed under the license they're expecting it to be under.

But as soon as somebody is using art for a commercial purpose, it definitely is their responsibility to make damn sure they're using that art correctly, because they're earning money off of it

[MAMAJUGO]

My issue with AI art is that in sites that allow it, for every genuine piece that an artist spent 3 days painting, someone can upload over 100 AI generated images, both clogging the site, and making the art of new young artists, the ones without an established audience, harder to find in the first place

[SirCasticComics]

I'm an artist and graphic novelist, I recognize that I don't know a lot about this whole situation, and that I can only speak to my experiences and feelings. So keep that in mind with what I share, and please give others a similar benefit of the doubt.
Someone else mentioned that the like about artists not really loving to draw was really strange, because, as someone who has been drawing compulsively since I was 2, I can say that I do REALLY love the process of drawing and painting in and of themselves. Most of the artists that I have met who have been not enjoying their art have largely been doing so because of broader mental health issues and the stress of having to produce more art than would be healthy.

Beyond that, I don't know about much else, I try to be open minded, and personally don't feel too threatened by AI art, but I know a lot of people who are terrified. For those of you who aren't trying to be professional artists, imagine if your favorite thing ever, and your livelihood that you have put thousands of hours of work into every day for years on end suddenly seems threatened to become obsolete? That's genuinely scary, regardless of the question of whether AI art is ethical or not. So to all my AI artist friends, please be charitable to the artists who are scared. I'm sure candlemakers were terrified when the light bulb was invented, we all know that was a good thing, but their fears were still valid and legitimate. It seems awfuly conceded to me that someone could see someone else in this position who is hurting and scared, and treat them with a lot of the venom that I have seen from the AI art community about this issue. Just look at other comments on this video and you'll see what I'm talking about.

That said, my fellow artists need to be more charitable about this too. Just because you are scared does not inherently make the opposition evil, neither does use of AI art inherently make the user evil. We need to stop focusing on attacking others because we're hurting and scared, as understandable and valid as that is, because all that is going to do is make them dig in their heels more, and put them in a similar fight or flight position. Regardless of how just the cause, in this situation, responding with hate and aggression will only cause more responses of hate and aggression.

Of all the things that scare me about AI art, the thing that scares me the most is the level of, frankly juvenile conflict that has surrounded it on both sides of the argument. In my mind, Shad's most powerful point was calling us to be more charitable in our discourse about this. It is hard, people are hurting, let's not make them hurt more, or make more people hurt.

[Real-HumanBeing]

@shadiversity Response, I hope you see it, I think I'm being fair and adressing your points properly:

4:14 "AI will be just as effective with public domain" -- that is not true. If it was, they would never have tried to navigate the legal landscape in such a weird way, where they have to make a for-profit company that is part of a non-profit company, or fund outside researchers to then use their products for profit. They could've just maintained an easily monetizable monopoly then, and spared themselves the social hazard. You could not get "in the style of Greg Rutkowski" without images by Greg. If these devs had put in protections so that artist's work can't be directly used to compete with artists, such as simply blacklisting artists' names from prompts, the entire debate would be far more relaxed. SD 2 is also still trained on its earlier dataset as well, it has merely been trained again on a more restricted data set, which still is mostly copyrighted imagery.

17:00 "when AI does it it's not suddenly bad" -- what needs to be acknowledged here, before this is debated honestly, is that before AI, there was an equilibrium. You could copy someone individually, but you'd always be limited by your maximum possible output. Even stealing someone's work directly would not affect the original creator in a meaningful way in almost all cases. This is not so with AI. Greg cannot compete with an infinite churning out of AI images in his style.

16:30 "artists have been copying for hundreds of years" -- and in most of these cases, it is seen as flattery and due to the point above, not in direct competition with the original creator. Having one's art so cheapened that it can be spat out in seconds is not flattery, it's generic mass production.

19:30 "when it's transformative you're immediately guaranteed that it's fair use" -- That is not true. The most important clause of fair use is the 4th, about how use affects the "market and value of the original". There is no worse affect case than here, see Greg example. Using someone's work to put that person out of their job is NOT fair by any stretch of the imagination.

21:00 "it does not redistribute it" -- Because of overfitting and memorization, Stable Diffusion's music AI relies ENTIRELY on copyright-free and voluntarily provided music. It is for instance possible to easily recreate Gogh's starry night or Curry's Afghan Girl, and do so flawlessly. Prompting bloodborne will also lead to many 1 to 1 cover copies. Depending on how specific a prompt is, you can almost always find what original image was referenced for what output.

22:48 "restricting AI art restricts people rights" -- See point 17:00. There is no comparison from AI to person because a person has limits. Their impact is automatically more benign than with AI.

26:00 "by just changing very little it's not affecting the original source" -- this may be true again for an individual doing these things, but not applicable with AI. It would be better for Greg if all of his images were directly stolen and sold, he could always just paint new ones, but with AI, the value of all his future paintings is impacted as well, to the point where he has stated that he worries for his employment, now that companies can just prompt images in his style instead of hiring him. Is using someone's work to do this fair?

28:30 "I want more art in the world" -- If there is one thing that will cause people to not care about beauty and art, it is it being done by machine. This may not be the case now, with it being a novelty, but it will be soon. We don't need more "pretty pictures" handed out en masse by a program. What we need is an appreciation for what is beautiful. By flooding our day to day with cheap AI images that get the "ooh pretty" response, we'll care less and less about beauty. It will leave us cold because of its overexposure. That is psychology 101. We already drive grey cars, live in grey homes and use grey appliances. We already don't care if our surroundings are beautiful and pleasant to look at. And why should we? Beauty comes so cheaply to us. It used to be that even every bollard also had a decorative function, not anymore. The brain is made in such a way that it acclimates to everything, so when you overload it with quick AI art, dopamine levels will soon normalize and it will not appreciate it any longer, and why should it, they came by without great thought in them. If beauty were to "die", it would be like this, becoming fast food, with the beholders dull to it, like desensitized drug addicts. We live life like it's a fast food restaurant.

29:20 "what a compliment that people want to reproduce it" -- I agree. But not for "AI art". Typing in three lines to get insta-art in my style would just feel insulting to me. That's all it was worth it to you? Like the type of grandma that goes to the counterstore to buy socks, rather than sewing them herself.

33:00 "creating something brand new" -- Refer to point 21:00 about overfitting and memorization.

36:00 "artists will be able to produce the best results" -- AI adjusting seems like a fool's errant, in particular given how the devs constantly talk about how the tech is in its baby steps. It is already doing countless of creative decisions that exceed what the average prompter had in mind, and with chat GPT full automation for personalized instant content could already be done. Given the strides the tech has taken, adjusting the size of the forehead just seems like something that will obviously not be required by the next model. You do not need to understand any artistic subject deeply with prompting already.

37:43 There are completely legible signatures, too, such as from getty images, Disney, shutterstock and so on. The only reason why it's more rare for individual artists is their underrepresentation in the data set, not some tech magic.

41:00 "right to imitate other people's styles" -- refer to point 17:00. Saying that this is just what people are always doing ignores the AI revolution. This is a whole new beast, and any comparison or equation is not going to work here.

44:00 "which artist is making all these mangled hands" -- this is a limitation of the image tagging, primarily. Pointing at current technical limitations as evidence that it's not copying is not a strong case.

54:00 Camera comparison -- Not the same thing. Here, we inherently have someone's work being used to threaten their livelihood.

56:00 "new industry, new jobs" -- again this just seems like a fool's errant, in particular given the breakthroughs with Chat GPT (in its baby steps). The naming (true or not) "artificial intelligence" should tell us from the start that this is not a tool, but a replacement. With AI, it will be possible to create instant personalized content using private data, pairing it with content recommendation algorithms to create content where voice acting, drawing, singing, photographing and writing is done by machine. Oh, you don't like that Steven King can't write a good ending to save his life? Well, here's a dozen books where the ending was written with your personal preferences in mind! You don't need to pay King either, just subscribe to Slob Diffusion!

58:33 Indie Devs -- There are only so many eyeballs to go around. With AI multiplying content creation by 1000x, this will lead to a twitch situation, where only 0.015% of creators can live off of doing what they love. Streaming is the best comparison here, because it's been (until AI) the quickest content creation, almost 1 to 1 investment time to hours. With AI, that will be exacerbated to the point that almost no one, depending on how much AI is adopted, can live off of their passion.

1:00:00 It's nice that you "still work with an artist", but that won't be the case for 99, 99% of uses.

1:00:15 "artists should benefit the most" -- even assuming that's true, and we ignore the cheapening of images in general, for how long? Can you guarantee this will be the case 5, 10 years down the line?

1:01:00 "Otherwise you will be outcompeted" -- So you do recognize that by their own labor, artists will not be able to do what they love? There are plenty of artists out there that love to draw, and don't want a machine to do it for them. To me, the idea just seems anti-human. (1/3)

[thomasmann]

As someone who does art as a hobby and has a degree in AI, I shouldn't really care about this, but I think it's a bit hypocritical that AI companies will go out of their way to prevent generation of "violent" or "NSFW" content, but allow the generation of clearly copyrighted characters and put in zero effort to get on the safe side when it comes to copyright in general. There's millions of copyright free images to us that could still train awesome AIs. There's tons of ways to include artists in the process, asking them, compensating them, etc. instead of going behind their backs. Artists are the ones who make this AI possible and they're the ones who can help it improve even more, but instead they're treated like garbage.

[antidotebrain]

I don't think there's any inherent problem with ai art but selling it as original work seems dishonest. If you use ai art for fun or to help generate ideals that's actually pretty cool. Selling straight generated stuff is kind of lazy i guess? I know that the more advanced stuff requires a lot of handling and refinement but it's not the same as creating your own product.

Edit: I'm just over an hour in. I'm dropping out here but based on what I've watched and read I really haven't changed my personal opinion.

[Narrative_Ink]

Many artists dont have the money or resources to take anyone to court.

[zerocalvin]

58:35 Shad said that AI generated artwork will not steal job away from other artist but explain how he could have save money if he didnt need to hire a good artist to design his bookcover and AI generated artwork will allow him to do that which result at least 1 good artist lost work to AI generated artwork.

yeah, I dont see why Shad would want to hire another artist to design his bookcover if he could do it himself with AI considering the result he shown us with a few click pretty much rival the artwork on his bookcover currently.

[GundamAngelicDevil]

an artist that I feel particularly bad for is Aroma Sensei.
first wave of Spiderverse Gwen AI art was a direct rip from her style, and it's also weird because she uses herself as reference.

[WorldWearyAngel]

Honest question, As an author would your opinion change if AI authors were developed? Like they fed the AI thousands of novels including potentially your own. Than the AI started developing novels? It is my understanding that that is essentially what the AI art are. Is it the same? Different? and if different in what way?

[hectoralvarado]

I want to see a response video from his Brother, Jazza. I don’t care if his brother is for or against it but I want to see someone who is close to him and close to the art community say something in response to this video

[grinningtiki]

I had an uncle tell me once the best investment you can make in is a shovel. There will always be dirt and they'll always be someone willing to pay to have it moved.

[CanisiaTherd]

Damn this is a difficult topic, as an artist myself, I find AI generators useful for inspiration, or being able to do slight changes to work that would otherwise take hours. What I don't agree with is people creating AI pieces and then selling them as their own pieces of art, I'm also afraid of what it'll do to the art industry, as several other people have said, whats the point in commisioning an artist when you can just create it with a few words and clicks with AI?

[hahano]

Wait... That sounds like what an ai would say. Are we sure shad is real?